Endure My World
by WingLancir
Summary: An experimental ending to what it isn't ended. Iruka and Kakashi, Naruto and Sasuke, and Itachi of course. YAOI. Judicious amounts of canon twisting.
1. Endure Traditions

_You could've been all I wanted_

_But you weren't honest_

_Now get in the ground_

_You choked off the surest of favors_

_But if you really loved me_

_You would've endured my world – Welcome Home, Coheed and Cambria_

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**_One: Iruka – Endure Traditions_**

It is an accepted tradition among the warrior classes that, on the day of a loved one's death, the person left behind/responsible/etc has the right to be: moody, out-of-sorts, scarce, inconsolable, mentally incapacitated, irrationally angry, pathetic, violent, uncommunicative, lethargic, depressed, suicidal, repressed, in denial, or otherwise useless as a functioning member of society, for one day only. In a place like Konoha, where death is literally a way of life, some people find it useful to lump all these break-down inducing anniversaries onto one convenient date, and disappear that morning to spare their fellows the inevitable mess that came from suppressing trauma. Some more disciplined (or foolhardy) people pretend to be completely unaffected, only to have their tragedies pile up and overtake them when they least expect it, or force them into bizarre patterns of behavior incomprehensible to anyone besides themselves, if it even made sense to them. These are often the dangerous ones.

There are those who cherish their pain and use it to hold themselves up, until it has become such an integral part of their character that living _without_ all that guilt is unthinkable. If revenge is involved they will speak of nothing else, but they would have no idea what to do with their lives afterwards. All too often to they refuse to believe that there is anything that _can_ be done with their lives afterwards, and take horrific steps to that end.

Some people are old fashioned, and observe anniversaries of death on the days that they occurred in the traditional way; spending some time in front of an altar and praying, or offering gifts, or burning incense or candles or other things that burned, or whatever else seemed appropriate to the grief-stricken.

Umino Iruka is the child of a traditional family. Every year, when That Day rolls around, he lights two candles inside his apartment (near an opened window, his practical mind reminds him with his mother's voice, and never leave them lit if you go out) and goes to visit the graves. He goes early in the morning before most of the village is awake. There were more families than his own destroyed by the demon fox, and over the course of the day things could get quite crowded, and Iruka has never appreciated strangers intruding on his traditions. He can fake the polite thanks and the perfect bow but he's never been able to stand the insincere overtures that others try to extend. They grieve for the Hokage, for their own loved ones, for the passing of their own innocence, and he knows with a child's narrow minded surety that they don't have any extra room in their hearts for sympathies towards him.

He knows this is true because can't bring himself to feel any for them. He'll say the words if he has to, he'll fake the expression, but in front of the graves the platitudes are an obligation, and he recognizes the emptiness in what they say to him. They ignore him the rest of the time.

Bad fortune, to be the living reminder of others' losses.

He bows his head in the bitter quiet of early morning and listens to the birds. A year, two years, three years before, he would be warm in his bed right now, listening to the familiar patterns of scuffle and breathing that were his parents practicing in the weak, chill light. They used to tease him for avoiding the cold and waiting until the frost was gone before getting up.

(He believes he used to have some sort of flippant rationalization for the practice, but he can't remember what it was anymore.)

The sun rises higher and pushes the shadows across him, replacing their chill with gold warmth. He remembers coming here when the bandage had still been heavy across half his face, giving him only one blurring eye to pick out and memorize the gravestones. He remembers how much it used to itch and how the nurses told him over and over to keep his hands away from it, oh Iruka, you were such a handsome boy, you don't want it to scar, do you?

He knew it was going to scar anyway. He would have felt somehow cheated if it hadn't.

He makes lists of things to tell his parents when he comes to visit them. Small things that have happened in his life since they'd gone, things he would have told them over dinner had they lived, and even things that he probably would have kept to himself if there was any chance of someone answering back. He tells his mother about the classes at the academy that have been cancelled or consolidated because of too few bodies left to both fill and teach them. He tells her the village gossip as it comes to his ears, who is expected graduate with record marks this year, who is getting married, and what country the happy couple will have to run away to before their parents will consent to the match. He tells her that doing his own laundry is a lot harder than it looks. He confesses that all his attempts to mimic her cooking have failed dismally, a few times forcing him to flee his new apartment until the smell of char cleared out.

He tells his father about the news trickling back from abroad, about the new Hokage, about what progress he'd made with his training now that there's no one but himself and his justifiably preoccupied teachers to help him improve. He apologizes for not having fixed the birdfeeder yet. He reports his increasingly unflattering grads with his forehead on the ground, eyes screwed up and pretending that he's avoiding his father's disapproving expression. He mentions a pretty girl in his class with red ribbons braided all through her hair.

(Each ribbon is for a relative lost to the demon fox, he later learns, and she wears them around both wrists, both ankles, and one more around her neck. Her eyes burn with a terrible intensity whenever someone mentions them and for some reason, he no longer finds her face so lovely when it is transformed by hate.)

After awhile the words run dry and an uncomfortable silence falls. He is never sure what the appropriate cut off point is, and can't ask, because the people he would have asked are dead. Ostensibly one is supposed to feel accomplished, or justified, or exonerated, or forgiven, or who knew what after these little rituals. Iruka doesn't feel anything anything except slightly sore from kneeling so long in the cold. And guilt, of course, but he feels guilty all the time. Guilt doesn't need a special occasion. He stares at the headstones and then at the ground and tries not to fidget, tries to think of something else to fill up the emptiness and down out the birds, tries to think of this as normal. It's just a fact that he'll be coming back out here every year for the rest of his life. It's just a fact that he'll have to do this all over again, get up before the sun and walk through grass still soaked with dew until his pants are wet, and burn his fingers on the matches he lights the incense with, and wait for the sun to come up and the birds to sing and for the numbness to settle in his joints that means he'll barely be able to get back up when he's finished. He'll come back and bow to the blank, silent stones and chatter inanely at them and they won't answer back and his words will fail his voice will fail his nerve will fail and he'll—

The sound of someone approaching (or at leas the suspected sound of someone approaching) sends him scrambling to his feet, cheeks bloodless and breathing too fast and irrational panic singing through his veins. He flees gracelessly, more flushed prey than shinobi. He reaches his own door and slams it shut behind him and puts his back to it before sinking down to the floor, trembling uncontrollably.

Panic attack. It has a name, a medical term, and he repeats it inside his head. These things happen to trauma victims. These things happen to warriors. Half of Konoha's jounin suffer from them and the other half likely just doesn't let anyone know.

He can hear someone choking out a whispered mantra of _'I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry'_ and realizes, after some time, that it is himself. His eyes are burning and then, spilling over even after he'd promised himself that he wouldn't be weak today, wouldn't be weak like he was on That Day ever again. A scream is trying to works it way out of his straining throat. He refuses to let it, shakes his head like a dog and ends up burying his teeth in his forearm to keep down, along with his breakfast. The pain is welcome, as is the pretense that he's been gagged, that someone else is in control of his body when he can't be. They'd gagged him on That Day to keep him from biting through his tongue. They'd held him down while he struggled and the sympathy in their eyes had made him want to rip their faces off. He wasn't able to hear their words or commands or pleas over the roaring of the demon and the sound of screaming, and when he finally twisted his hands free he clapped them to his ears to try and block out the noise.

He can still hear it. He turns his head blindly, seeking escape from his own mind and unable to find it within the sterile walls of his apartment. Claustrophia, sudden and overwhelming, pushes him to the window and he struggles pathetically with the latch until it gives. The sky is wide enough to support his unraveling sanity. The dark seclusion of the forest will hold him together when he's flying apart.

He flees the coming day like all the howling specters of Hell are snapping at his heels.

No one remarks on Iruka's absence. He is a traditional child, and so polite to take his annual episodes of madness away from public. He'll be back the next day, blank eyed and exhausted and moving like he might break, and he won't say anything, and no one will anything to him. Iruka is not the only child ever to be orphaned by war or fate. The villagers are sure that the best thing for him, for all of them, is to rebuild and move on, and are sure that as the years go by the anniversaries will get a little easier.

Iruka absently runs his thumb over the long healed scar on his wrist, and is sure they won't.


	2. Endure Demons

What do I own? I own nothing. Alas.

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_**Two: Iruka – Endure Demons**_

He is fourteen when he sees the blue eyed demon for the first time.

There have been rumors, of course. There are always rumors. The demon fox escaped by taking a human form, it had possessed someone, it had spawned some kind of lingering ghost, it had tainted recently born babies and was causing them to grow up as demons…etc etc.

"They sealed it," Iruka's classmate hisses, ribbons in her hair and madness in her eyes. "They didn't kill it, they sealed it in here, so it could come back and finish what it started someday."

Iruka stares at her and at the sleeping demon she is holding too tightly. The little boy has blond hair in familiar spikes and strange, whisker-like markings on his cheeks and chakra patterns that can't possibly belong to a human, much less a three year old. Sachi shows him the spiral shaped seal on the boy's stomach with a triumphant expression.

"I knew it was there. They were hiding it, but I could feel it. All I had to do was keep looking."

A vessel. A child vessel, a sealed container for the nine tailed fox, just like the rumors claimed. Iruka has never seen him in public before and knows that however Sachi spirited him away from his usual guardians (whoever they were), she's just broken god knew how many of the Hokage's laws.

"I'm going to kill it, Umino."

Add one more to the tally.

He protests automatically, stalling for time, and trying not to think about how close her kunai is to the boy's throat and the unsettling note of rapture in her voice. "You can't murder a child."

"It's not a child," she answers dreamily. "It's a monster. It's _that_ monster in the shape of a child. I have to avenge my family." She smiles beatifically at him but it's a fractured smile and his skin crawls at the sight of it. "But you're here, and you've got a claim. Do you want to help, Umino-kun?"

Revenge. Revenge. He remembers three years of living the wrong life, that of the orphaned prankster _failure_ Iruka rather than the promising student Iruka who'd been working to join his father and mother as part of ANBU. Orphan Iruka will never make jounin, much less ANBU. Orphan Iruka will spend the rest of his life as a low level chuunin in Konoha, never achieving any kind of importance, doomed to be forgotten as soon as he died.

And it's all this little boy's fault.

Sachi must have tightened her grip right at that moment because the demon wakes up with a muted, unhappy noise. Eyes as blue as the sky, as blue as the ocean of Iruka's family name, focus on him and begin to well with tears. As young as the boy is, he doesn't make another sound, as if he's already learned that crying doesn't ever make anything better.

As if, even at three, he already knows what's it like to be the living reminder of others' losses.

"What pretty eyes," Sachi remarks. The tip of her kunai is digging into the demon's soft cheek. He squirms away from it a little, face screwing up when Sachi hisses and presses it harder.

"Should I cut them out, do you think?" Her hand creeps over the boy's trembling mouth, ready to silence him. A bead of red wells up at the kunai's point and tearful blue eyes go even wider. Sachi giggles softly to see it.

"Stop it," Iruka whispers, appalled.

"Stop what? Don't you want to see it bleed?" She giggles again. "I didn't know demons bled as easily as any human. I guess that means it's not immortal. Lucky for us." Her arm is tensed to dig the blade in deeper. Iruka's mouth goes dry.

"Sachi, _stop it."_

"No. Someone has to do this. Before it gets loose again." She blinks as Iruka steps close, pushing the kunai aside and reaching to take the child from her. "What are you--"

"Give him to me," he says firmly. "I have ...claim, like you said."

"Pushy," she accuses, pouting and briefly resisting before surrendering the blond. "I want an eye. I'll let you kill it, but I want its eyes."

"No one's going to kill anyone." The demon is dead weight in Iruka's arms, neither clinging nor struggling, his tufts of blond hair as soft as feather down against Iruka's neck. He is heavier than he looks. His skin is cool from the night air and combined with his curious stillness Iruka has to pretend that it doesn't feel like he's holding a tiny corpse.

Something flickers in Sachi's unfocused eyes. She looks back and forth between his grim expression and the silent child, and her mouth twists in sudden fury. "You—"

"Go home, Sachi." He cradles the boy awkwardly, the only child never having learned how to hold a baby or a toddler.

"It killed your parents." She is incredulous.

"He didn't kill anyone. He's just a baby."

"No." She shakes her head wildly and holds out her hands. "No, no, no. Give it back. Give it back to me right now. It's got to die tonight."

"Go home, Sachi," he repeats, half turned away from her in readiness to leave, but there is leashed tension in his muscles to match the warning under his words.

_"Give it back!"_

Her kunai buries itself in his shoulder, as he'd expected, right before she launches herself at him.

Perhaps fifteen minutes later, it is a very tired and very bloody Umino Iruka that makes his painful way towards the Hokage's door in the middle of the night, carrying a spattered but otherwise unscathed little blond boy.

"Sorry," he whispers to the child who is now clinging to him like a lifeline and trying not to stagger like a drunk. "Probably not going to look good on your record, getting rescued by a guy like me. I'm a screw-up, you know. A failure. A real ninja would've gotten you out of a scrape like that without a scratch."

If the demon child has any regrets about not being saved by a real ninja, he doesn't show it. His chubby little arms remain tightly locked around Iruka's neck. The chuunin would have liked to put his dizziness down to this stranglehold, but figures it has more to do with the lump swelling into existence on the back of his skull where Sachi had slammed his head into the concrete.

"I'm Iruka, by the way," he says, trying to walk in a straight line and failing. "I guess I don't know your name." He turns to look at the kid. "Do you have a name? Or do they just call you demon boy?"

Wide blue eyes set in a solemn expression stare at him from only a few inches away. Unsettled despite himself, Iruka smiles uneasily. The form might be that of a human child, but there's still a monster underneath the boy's skin.

The boy beams suddenly, his entire face suddenly transformed, and it's like the dawn breaking. "Iruka," he says, clear and pure and delighted.

"That's my name," Iruka mutters back half-heartedly after a moment, a little stunned. "Get your own."

"Iruka!"

"No, _your_ name. You're three, you know how to talk..."

Iruka freezes as the boy buries his face in the chuunin's neck like a puppy seeking heat, and repeats himself so softly as to be a mere breath of sound. "Iruka."

Somehow, one of Iruka's hands finds its way to the demon's soft gold hair. Like feathers, or down fur. Fox fur. A fox demon, his parents' murderer, trapped in the shape of a little boy, and the undutiful failure of a son beating up a girl over him, and Iruka's utter lack of feeling the guilt he ought to be feeling over all of it. It's funny, he surprises himself by just how damn funny he finds it, and between pained wheezes he's laughing until his bruised ribs protest while the little boy looks on in incomprehension.

"Iruka?"

"Yeah." His voice is uneven and his smile not quite right, but it's getting better. "That's me. I guess we can both be Iruka if we have to."


End file.
